Tiger Woods, Bobby Petrino, Arnold Schwarzenegger and many other prominent men have all engaged in extra-marital affairs and were scorned when those affairs became known.

But at what point does such behavior affect the general public?

In most cases, I regard a person's private scandal as something that's not the public's business as long as its impact doesn't extend beyond his immediate family and friends.

Unfortunately, that's not the case with former CIA Director David Petraeus. As the head of an agency whose entire business is dealing with secrets, he had no "personal privacy" defense once his adulterous affair came to light. The term "pillow talk" has real meaning, and Americans have every right to assume a person in Petraeus' position isn't engaging in it with people he shouldn't. Poor judgment like this made Petraeus vulnerable to blackmail which in turn left our country vulnerable to unscrupulous outside agents.

My purpose here isn't to condone or encourage adulterous behavior. But a golfer's dalliances are between him, his wife and his maker, and obsessing on all the lurid details seems unbecoming to me.

David Petraeus' cheating ways, however, involved us all. And for that, he had to go.